The Toad Hanyou
by B'stard
Summary: A look into the past of a 'great' shinobi. What broke him and who fixed him? Two chapter fic. First attempt at writing.


There hadn't been a time in his life where he had been happier than at this exact moment. It was as if life was finally handing him everything he had ever wanted on a silver platter. After all the setbacks he had been forced to endure, Kami was finally making up for past shortcomings.

There had been peace in the world for 6 years after the Third Great Shinobi War had ended and there were no signs of a relapse. Peace was settling around the world and everyone seemed to be prospering because of it.  
Sure it wasn't ALL peaches and cream. There were still plenty of bandits in the woods, greedy businessmen in the cities and corrupt politicians in the daimyo's court. And his village was the better for it.  
Heaven knows, if true utopia would ever be attained, Hidden Villages like his own would become redundant before you could say 'Shinobi'.  
But all of the minor evils in the world still couldn't begin to compare to the horrors that a war spreads like a cheap tayu with gonorrhea.  
After you've burned down a sweatshop full of orphans because they were forced to make armored wear for the enemy, you'll start to think that killing a rich merchants rival in a love interest is just the respectable thing to do. Trying to ignore the fact that the stitches on your own jounin vest, look far too small to have been made with matured hands.

But that was the past and this is the present, a time where he could lay off the missions for a while, Kami knows he's done plenty of those. With over 1800 hundred notches on his headband it was no wonder people had started calling him 'Team One'.  
To his peers it was a testament to how great a ninja he was, to him it was just a reminder of the biggest failures in his life.

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The first 600 missions were to prove something to his teammates.

He wanted to show his sensei he was just as good a shinobi as Orochi-teme was, so one day he might look at him with that same sparkle of proud that seemed to be reserved only for Orochimaru.  
He wanted to show Orochimaru he was worthy of his respect. Worthy to be his equal, his friend and maybe his brother, worthy to be the family Orochimaru so clearly missed and longed for.  
And of course to Tsunade-hime he wanted to prove he was worthy of her heart. So that one day he wouldn't need a hole in a wall to admire her beauty.

But then came the Second Great Shinobi War and he was forced to grow up and out of his delusions.

The Old Man was never going to realize he had trained the Sannin, not the Shonin. And if he wanted sparkles he should just look at the stars, they were about as much within his reach as Sarutobi's recognition.  
Orochimaru was never going to consider him to be of the same caliber as he was. And the snide remarks he consistently kept throwing his way were just that, snide remarks. He stopped deluding himself that there was a brotherly fondness to them and that there ever had been.  
Tsunade was never going to give him her heart. The hours she spent enticing him through that hole, knowing full well he was on the other end of it, were never meant to be a preview to something more to come. A lie he had told himself for years. And this Dan guy was not just a phase she was going through to deal with the war and the loss of her little brother. The hole in her wall had been fixed and he was on the wrong side of it when it happened. As he always had been.  
And so the next 600 missions were spent running away from his tormentors.

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Luckily For him Sarutobi Hiruzen wasn't a complete failure as a sensei. The Old Man had decided he wouldn't let his student get lost in the darkness that had been surrounding him a little more with every mission he took on. So he was 'grounded' to Konoha through 3 fresh genins that were way too cute for their own good. And it had worked.

After the first time he had met them he had thought nothing of them. They were just three snotnosed kids and he was to turn them into soldiers of Konoha.

After Their first D-rank mission he had been amused at their antics.

After Their first C-rank mission he had been proud of them. They had worked together and managed to get the job done without him lifting a hand.

After their first B-rank mission he had cried for the first time since his parents had died.  
They had made their first kills. He had turned them into the damned soldiers the village requested and robbed them of their childhood while he had been at it. That's when he started letting a little of the old Jiraiya back out, hoping his quirks might preserve some off their innocence.

After their first A-rank mission he had been terrified. They had been ambushed by 12 jounin from Iwa, and for the first time he had truly feared for their lives. And he knew that that fear had been justified. The three of them together might be able to take on two of them but a whole dozen was just too much for them.  
His fears had become reality when he saw Hiraku getting pierced by a sword and slumping to the ground. That's when he snapped. It had taken him less than 5 minutes to deal with the Iwa jounin after that. The Third had admitted to him once that every time he had seen his student splinter, it had put the fear of God in the God of Shinobi.  
He realized that day that he would fight off all the demons and all the gods in a tutu just to keep _his children_ safe.

The darkness had faded, and been replaced by three shining lights.

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Not long after that the Third Great Shinobi War started. And when it was all over he had this twisted sense of victory over his former teammates.

He had finally proven his worth to Orochimaru when _his_ student was named Yondaime Hokage. The smug look he had given the Bastard, after Sandaime had formally announced it, was enough payback for a lifetime of snide remarks. Too bad the Snake bastard lost his marbles because of it.  
This in turn opened Sarutobi's eyes to the true nature of his Boy Wonder. Unfortunately for the Old Ape, the realization had come too little too late.  
As for Tsunade, well, now _she_ was the one too experience true hartbreak.

Not that any of it had mattered anymore. The so called victories he had gained were nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to the losses.

He may have grown a great dislike for his teammates in the past years, but it still hurt when they left. They had abandoned him in a time he needed every ounce of comfort he could get.  
He had lost two of his children. Two of his lights had faded and the darkness wasted no time to find its way back into his hart.  
The loss off Hiraku and Yoruichi had been enough to put him on the edge, but it had been his own actions that made him want to jump off of it. Even though the Village of Konoha lauded him as a war hero, _he _knew he was a war criminal, just like every other shinobi with a nickname knew they were.  
Every time someone called him The Toad Sage, _he_ would hear an enemy in the distance calling him The Toad Hanyou. Hell, the sight of his Sage transformation could still make a seasoned Iwa jounin wet his pants.  
When they called him The Gray Haired Warrior, _he _knew the enemy was calling him The Ashen Porcupine. He still couldn't believe how many people he had killed with a technique he'd developed as a kid to upstage Orochimaru's perverse tongue stretching.  
A crowd could be cheering him on as The Hero of Akai, but all he would register was Undertaker of Akai. An army of 70 buried alive with just one jutsu _and still_ they called him a hero.  
His fellow shinobi idolized him, while he was disgusted with himself. Unfortunately self-loathing and guilt had no place in the world of ninja. Konoha was still in the aftershock of a war and it couldn't afford its shinobi to have a conscience.

So, he did what he did best, he took on a shitload of missions, never remaining in the village for more than 2-3 days at a time. Even then it was just because The Brat refused to assign him any missions. Each of these forced interludes would be spent following the same routine. He'd get drunk, pick up a nameless woman and relieve some stress.

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It was during the second part of his routine that he had noticed _her_. At first it had just been from the corner of his eye, she was just a kunoichi sitting by herself having a drink, certainly not an odd occurrence among shinobi. It was the frequency with which he saw her that drew his full attention. She was there 2 times out of 3 when he went there, always alone and always drinking. She had chestnut hair, caramel skin and eyes to match her jounin vest and a figure most women would kill for. Despite her beauty, he had kept away from her for as long as he could. He knew she was like him. Wounded to the core and covered in salt. Any sort of interaction with her would force him to deal with his own pain. No beauty in the world was worth that. Or so he had thought.  
It was the combination of an exceptionally despicable mission, an extremely self-destructive mood and a shitload of sake that had made him act against his better judgment.

—Flashback—

He made his way over to her and decided to use the best pick-up line in his arsenal. "Hi there", she turned and made eye contact stopping him dead in his tracks more efficiently than anyone before ever had. Whatever he was about to say next was erased from his mind.  
She only looked him in the eye for a split second, but to him it felt like a lifetime. His buzz was entirely gone and he felt a clearance he had never felt before. He could read her eyes like an academy scroll. First there was annoyance, then came recognition followed by understanding and sympathy, accompanied by the saddest smile he had ever seen.  
All the while recordings of his life were being played in her eyes. Only it wasn't his life, but rather that of a Jiraiya who had done things differently. One who hadn't taken 3 genin as his students. One who hadn't fallen in love with Tsunade. Who hadn't looked up to Orochimaru and hadn't cared about what Sarutobi thought of him. A simple and happy man. He envied and despised that Jiraiya.

Suddenly he wondered if time had made the same sacrifice for the woman he'd killed yesterday.  
Whether _she_ had seen a different life reflected in _his_ eyes, right before his kunai pierced her eye and entered her brain. A life where she hadn't been raped by the Daimyo. Where she had simply gotten pregnant by a man she loved.  
Maybe she had even seen how the life of her newborn son would have played out, if he had lived, and he hadn't been a possible threat to the future political balance of Hi no Kuni.  
Because he was far too young have understood the images, even if they _had_ reflected in his eyes.

When the moment passed all she said was, "Your place or mine?" Before she got up and started making her way to the exit.  
Stunned and taken by surprise he hurried after her and blurted out the worst thing possible, "Wait, what's your name?" As soon as the words had left his mouth, he realized he was screwed.  
"Konohana Sakuya".

—End Flashback—

Nothing more was said that night. He had taken her back to his place to engage in some of the best stress relief of his life and she had left before the break of dawn.

The next day passed like any other. He got himself another mission, packed the bare necessities and went on his way. But for the first time in a long while he was actually looking forward to getting back to Konoha in one piece.

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**AN: Well this was part one of my fic. One more chapter coming up. This is my very first attempt at writing, I'm very curious about what people think of it, so pls Read and Review.**  
**Any questions about the story can also be asked in a review, and it'll be answered in the next AN I guess.**


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